Shanghai has set out a financial talents attraction program to build the city into an international financial center, the Pudong Times quoted an official from the Shanghai financial authority as saying.

The program, designed to improve the environment for talent development and help local enterprises enter the global market, has learned from the experience of other global financial centers and plans to bring the total number of financial talents in Shanghai to 500,000 within next five years, Kong Qingwei, the Party secretary of the Shanghai Financial Work Committee told reporters at the 2015 Lujiazui Forum on June 27.

In recent years, the city has been promoting financial innovation and opening up, providing a series of favorable policies to financial enterprises. As of end-2014, Shanghai has 1,405 financial enterprises, with foreign invested financial institutions accounting for 30 percent of the total.

Although the city has enjoyed fast development in the financial field, there is still a long way to go compared with other international financial metropolises such as London, New York, Tokyo and Singapore, according to Kong.

So far, the city has 350,000 professionals engaged in the financial sector, accounting for 5 percent of the total workforce in the city. The ratio is lower than the traditional financial centers, which usually have a 10 percent financial workforce, said Kong, adding that Shanghai still lacks professionals in venture capital investment, technological finance and the Internet finance and experts with international vision and background.

Edited by Mevlut Katik